GGG

Gandhi is still worthy. The fashion of Mohandas does not fade. The gong of Gandhi rings louder every day, if we can even use the adverb, violently.

And every day it is easier to hitch oneself to Gandhi’s wagon. Because you don’t even have to know anything about the Prophet G (not even his phobia not so Hippocratic as hypocritic against the point G). It is enough to know that Gandhi is still useful for those of us who plot in the key of peace-love-and-liberty.

I even keep an ancient Apple propaganda (on this little island there are more laptops than apples). Gandhi has long since become a post-planetary digital icon. Gandhi is chic cool glam light. Gandhi sells, he’s a box-office success (ask Attenborough and company). Gandhi is on the point of having his Lennonform statute in some dead little park in Havana (with the same stealing of the glasses). And, in the midst of the provincial Chefidelity of our XXI century socialism, the frail little figure of the Hunger Striker in Chief never ceases to fascinate (a word that is a false cognate of fascism).

Among the young Gandhi is God, only equally by Papa Ras Tafari of Ethiopia Superstar. That is, only comparable to ganja: sweet hemp that still cannot be found in any legal place in our blocked Utopia (except in the International School of Cinema and Television of San Antonio de los Baños, where its cultivation is a cultural question).

In certain festivals, fairs and show business extravaganzas the drunk spit at me the abracadabra of Gandhi, as if he were the next evangelist (and in fact he is). The enthusiasm is overwhelming. And it’s logical. Gandhi, among other island unrealities has allowed these novices I and some veterans of the Peter Pan syndrome) to escape their family and country without killing themselves from boredom and desperation.

Gandhi is, then, a gun loaded with happiness. A guarantee that through the national nonsense you can open cracks where you can gasp (Gandhi as snorkel). Gandhi is the counter-discourse of our delirious and dissident Dalits, untouchable except by State Security, who forces them to meditate for weeks or months in their sacred precincts without charges (domestic empire where the light saver bulb never sets).

In this sense, we will defend our Gandhi at any price. Our ganja, we will defend while it reaches our pocket and not a police raid.

At times I’ve had the discourtesy to question Gandhi. Some, just a little. A biographical fact. A quotation although it passed by Hollywood. A truth in truth nonviolent that has survived the snake charmer.

And then the one who is depressed is me. Of course, almost no one can add much to the story. At best, trinkets from Encarta.Pasted by pre-pubertal intellectuals yesterday afternoon (tomorrow they will be Compulsory Military Service conscripts). Misunderstandings and misinterpretations. Smoke clouds (of socialite cubannabis). Gandhi as gibberish, as Buddhist bluff. Satyagrahavana of fictions.

But I think it’s very well. The New Man doesn’t live by bread (nor sticks) alone. We lack a cheap valve for the illusion. A Gandhi in rags against the so well uniformed FAR and the mysteries of MININT. A prankster of salt evaporating under our too strong sun. A Gandhi of ganja in the midst of the fear of our Siboney Granita.

The danger of this greedy glory is when we also leave Gandheloquent to eat.